PROJECT 39 ~ Junior 600 Championship

With only 1 weekends break since the previous round it’s time to conquer Snetterton again. Snetterton isn’t a favourite track of Project Racing as on our previous visit Colin fell off, Andy wrote his bike off and Daz binned Boo’s rather pretty K7. Anyhow, conquering your demons and all that...

Friday’s trackday was a bit strange, everything was going wrong, and not just for us. Colins faithful GSXR overheated and emptied the radiator into the belly pan. Great! Andy had noise problems, which ended when his exhaust exploded on the morning’s sighting lap leaving him with a carbon fibre megaphone bolted onto the bike :-) . Our greatful thanks go to Moores Racing for the loan of their (brand new) spare can for the morning session and especially to Graves Motorsport who drove a replacement can from Essex by lunchtime, stayed while it was fitted, noise and track tested. All for FREE because the can was still under warranty. FANTASTIC
Anyhow, we overcame all of these problems and got some decent track time in on the afternoon. At the end of the day we were happy with our progress and were hopeful of Sunday’s race.

Sunday morning. Everyone got all geared up and we were just waiting for the Nationals, Masters and Seniors to finish their practice session when the whole meeting all of a sudden got put on hold. Tragically, Richard Slater (Sorrymate.com Racing) crashed after the chequered flag and died. This very sobering tragedy cast a shadow over the whole paddock . However after a few hours there was a riders meeting where following a minutes silence for Richard everyone agreed to continue with a shortened racing schedule in memory of Richard.

All classes we let out for a 10min combined practice / qualifying. To be honest, our hearts weren’t in it after the news of Richard, but the day must go on. Qualifying saw PR39 take 2nd in class behind TM72 Juniors (which is a whole other story). TM72 Juniors were short of a rider so drafted in a MRO and British Supersport experienced rider Sarah Jordan. Sarah beat Andy to pole position by 2secs!! Which didn’t bode well for the race as there is always close racing between Colin and TM72’s second rider (Claire).

Race start, all lined up (starting from 8th pos due to combined grid), flag dropped and we’re away. Andy got a good start, getting held up slightly on the grid but managed 4th over the line and 6th into the first corner. He got his head down and was lapping steadily. At about 15mins in Sarah Jordan came passed and Andy tried his hardest to stay on her tail but her bike was so fast she was keeping with 1000cc bikes on the straights!! TM72 gapped PR39 by about 10secs which is when the safety car made its first and only appearance which unfortunately gave TM72 a lap’s advantage (and let NR catch up with us!)...not good!!

First pit stop (flawless) and Colin was out. Colin was going okay but kept running himself off the track (staying upright) which gave NR the chance they needed to catch up and pass, which luckily was short lived. Colin got straight back passed them and steadily started to gap them with Nathan of NR becoming increasingly desperate taking to the grass in his attempts to keep up. This gave PR39 the space they needed (+20secs) to start concentrating again on TM72 who were a lap and a bit ahead. At the 2hr mark Colin came in and Andy went out for his last stint. Andy finally found a good rhythm and managed to track down Sarah Jordan who was suffering from tiredness and was lapping a bit slower than earlier. Andy managed to get passed and started to put distance between himself and TM72. We maintained our second place till the end of the race and finished 30secs behind TM72. Not a bad day’s racing.

Award proceedings were skipped as a mark of respect for Richard Slater and all of our thoughts are with Richard and his family in these terrible times.

So, one round to go (Silverstone) and technically we can still win the championship, but the chances are quite slim. To win PR39 will need to come in 1st place (securing 25 points) and we will need NR Racing to DNF.

We’ll see....